“None of Them Will Be My Mother!” the Duke’s Son Declared — Until the Cook Brought an Apple Pie
Chapter 3
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"Perfectly, my lady."They went up the stairs in a rustle of silk and outrage, and the door at the top closed with a sound like a verdict.Rosamund stood very still. Then her knees informed her that they were finished, and she sat down hard on the nearest stool with her heart galloping and her palms wet."Thirty-one," she told herself. "Thirty-one."She had just thrown away the only safe harbor she had found in four hard years, and she had done it for a child who had not even looked at her."You should not have said that," said a small, hoarse voice from beneath the table."No," Rosamund agreed. "It was very foolish of me."There was a pause. "Did you mean it?""Every word."Another pause, longer. "I am not going to like you," Master Edmund informed her darkly. "I should like you to know that now.""That is perfectly all right," said Rosamund, rising and reaching for the flour. "I shall not require it."Apples keep their secrets until the knife goes in. Rosamund chose the pippins from the loft because they were tart enough to stand up to sugar, and she peeled them in long, unbroken ribbons, one after another, while the boy under the table pretended not to watch.She did not speak to him. She had long believed that a person in grief did not need to be talked at; he needed to be fed something that remembered him. So she worked, and the sharp, clean smell of apples rose into the vaulted room like a held note.She had not made this particular pie since coming back to Ashborne. Nobody had. Mrs. Hollis, the housekeeper, had told her gently in March that no apple pie had left this kitchen since the autumn of 1815, when the Duchess died; and that it had never been forbidden, only left unspoken, the way a family leaves one chair empty at table.But Rosamund remembered: five years ago, when she was a kitchen maid of 23, the young Duchess Eleanor had come down those stairs every Sunday afternoon, tied an apron over her silk, and made apple pie at this very table with a small boy standing on a stool beside her. She had been a laughing, untidy, clever woman who ignored every rule about duchesses and kitchens, and she had written out her recipe on a card for the quiet girl who always watched, because she said a good pie deserved a second keeper.The card was in Rosamund's apron pocket now. It had traveled with her through her father's long illness, his funeral, and two other kitchens, and it was soft as cloth from handling, the ink faded to the brown of weak tea: brown sugar and a little honey from the estate hives, a grating of nutmeg, a pinch of cloves, a curl of lemon peel, and no raisins whatsoever. A solid lid, not a lattice, with a star cut through the center to let the steam breathe.